The Unicorns Reunion in the Works

Back in 2004, Canadian indie rock group the Unicorns put out their final release, an EP titled 2014. Nick Thorburn formed Islands and dabbled in other projects, including Mister Heavenly and Human Highway. Alden Penner formed Clues and Hidden Words and recently released a solo album, Exegesis. Jamie Thompson was an on-and-off member of Islands.

Now, reunion shows and a potential reissue are in the works.

Penner told the Kreative Kontrol podcast that the band recently acquired back the master rights to their 2003 full-length Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? and might reissue it. Penner said the band discussed the idea of remastering the album and "including some other recordings that never made it out."

But, Penner added, "the important thing right now is that we might play some shows and maybe even record some new material while we’re at it. These are all maybes, which have been thrown out there a lot. I guess good practice is that you do what you say."

"We might arrange a handful of shows," Penner said. "We're definitely talking about playing together and seeing what happens. And we'll probably do some shows in the major cities we've played in–probably Toronto, Montreal, New York, L.A., Vancouver—that sort of thing. Whatever’s feasible and it being conditional on it being fun for us to do."

He added:

The Unicorns had a song called 'The Unicorns 2014,' which was an ironic vision given the reality of our longevity, that we wrote back in the early 2000s. At the moment, Nick and I have been speaking about the scheduling side of things and it’s really hard to do for individuals who are planning different tours and playing in different projects. We are trying to get more specific about the month of April being a possibly good one to get together and just jam again.

According to Penner, 2014 is "Year of the Unicorn". He stressed that any future reunion is rooted in his and Thorburn's friendship:

We met in high school and had this sincere, nice, musically-based friendship that, unfortunately got torn apart by music industry circumstances and competing attitudes about how things should be done. That's really a minor thing when it comes down to renewing a friendship and that's why I feel good about this particular endeavor—it's not really a cash grab or based on any sort of nostalgia coming from those who've been calling for it for a long time. It feels like a point in my life where it'd be nice to honor that friendship. It's never too late to that sort of thing, even though it might feel that way as you get older.

Update: Thorburn tells SPIN, "Don't get your hopes up. We are talking right now but that's as far as it's gotten. We've talked about this kind of thing many times over the years and while it's true that this is the furthest along it's gotten, conceptually, it's still just talk."